Huge urgency and consummate skill: an interview with Jim Pennington

ABSTRACT

Jim Pennington is a printer and small press publisher who trained at London's North-Western Polytechnic and the London College of Printing. Over the course of his long career, he has worked as a print room and production manager first for the British Safety Council (1971–75) then for the anti-poverty charity War on Want (1975–79) and then for the Lithosphere Printing Co-operative (1979–1991), among others. In parallel, Pennington ran Aloes Books, the influential small press he established with the poets Allen Fisher and Dique Miller. Aloes Books has published key works by Kathy Acker, Thomas Pynchon and William Burroughs, among many others.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This introductory note drew on the interview material and information from a number of additional websites, including:

http://www.lithosphere.co.uk/content/jim.htm,

https://thomaspynchon.com/pynchon-cover-art/pynchon-bootleg-editions/

and http://www.inkmonkeybooks.com/tuningin/feature/.

2 Various processes are named during this interview which Pennington – speaking from his position of long-held experience – offers in abbreviated form. To retain this conversational style while being specific with terminology, we have elected to use the full name of a given process at the point of first citation and then the abbreviation for subsequent instances. Thus, ‘mimeograph’ becomes ‘mimeo’ and ‘lithograph’ becomes ‘litho’, and so on.

3 Now was founded by George Woodcock in 1940, running until 1947. Only the first issue was stencil duplicated, the rest were letterpress and litho. The Time Traveller, edited by Allen Glasser was one of the earliest mimeograph science fiction fanzines, running under different guises from 1932–1937.

4 The very first printing of ‘Howl’ (approx. 30 copies for a college reading) was done on a Ditto spirit duplicator. Not only does the inked image during printing get lighter the longer the run, the copies themselves will fade over the years even when not in daylight.

5 Risographs are digital duplicators designed for high-volume, high-quality print runs. They were introduced to the Japanese market in 1980 by the Riso Kagaku Corporation. It is worth noting other manufacturer names that are used to describe the generic printing processes: Gestetner and Roneo for stencil printing; Ditto, Banda and Heyer for spirit.

6 Allen Fisher started Spanner magazine in 1974, which became a forum for experimental poetry.

7 Ozalid manufactured dry developed sensitised paper as well as office equipment.

8 Aloes published Poem to Joanie (1971–2) in an edition of 300 copies. The text was originally intended as a set of liner notes for a recording of a concert by Joan Baez.

9 The Institute for Research in Art and Technology, also known as the New Arts Lab, was founded in 1969. Its board of directors included David Lifton, John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins, David Curtis, Hugh Davies, Biddy Peppin and Pamela Zoline. In 1970 IRAT hosted J.G. Ballard’s notorious exhibition of crashed cars.

10 Bill Butler was an American poet who founded Unicorn Bookshop with Mike Hughes in Brighton, 1967. The bookshop stocked Beat-related titles, and it was raided a number of times for stocking ‘obscene materials.’

11 John Upton was a Brighton-based poet and artist. He edited The Brighton Head and Freak Mag which was published from the Unicorn Bookshop.

12 ‘Out, demons out’ was popular as a protest-related clarion call for the anti-war protest movement of the late-1960s. It was famously chanted during the 1967 march on the Pentagon. The Edgar Broughton Band later used it as the title of a song released in 1970. For further details see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH8SyEExDss and https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-rag-tag-group-acid-dropping-activists-tried-levitate-pentagon-180965338/.

13 According to Pennington, ‘Dick (now Dique) Miller […] worked in Birmingham, Brighton, and London on various art and poetry projects including the Black Country Meat Chronicle and early Fluxus publications. He helped establish Aloes Books in the 70s before moving to New York where he produced four issues of Spanner/NYC and was a founding member of Collaborative Projects, participating in the legendary Times Square Show of 1980. He now lives in Pennsylvania on the Delaware River where he has a production studio making functional and sculptural objects and puzzles. He never wanted to be an artist, he just wants to make art.’

14 Jeff Nuttall's mimeographed little magazine, My Own Mag: A Super absorbant [sic] periodical, ran for seventeen issues between 1963 and 1966.

15 Beau Geste Press was founded by Felipe Ehrenberg, Martha Hellion and David Mayor in 1970. Based in Devon, and associated with the Fluxus movement, Beau Geste Press became an influential community of printers until it ended in 1976.

16 C: A Journal of Poetry was founded by Ted Berrigan in 1963, running until 1967. This mimeographed little magazine featured work by the second-generation New York School, including Joe Brainard and Ron Padgett; Strange Faeces, edited in the UK by Opal and Ellen Nations, was an experimental poetry, fiction and art magazine that ran between 1970 and 1980 for twenty issues; Paul Buck has been active in the UK poetry and small press scene since the 1960s.

17 Bob Cobbing (1920–2002) was a British sound, visual and concrete poet. In 1963, he founded the Writers Forum, a publisher and writers’ network.

18 Bill Butler at the Unicorn Bookshop, Brighton. Pennington describes his work with Butler and the influence of the shop in the preceding part of the interview. See note 10.

19 Edited by Mayor and Ehrenberg, Schmuck ran for eight issues between 1972 and 1976.